There is no theft if you don’t have a concept of ownership.
See e.g. the punishments used by members of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy for theft.
Well it doesn’t look too bad:
Theft [in Haudenosaunee/Iroquois society] was comparatively rare, for land was the property of the community, surplus food was commonly shared with needier neighbors, and the long bark dwelling belonged to the maternal family, and the personal property like the tools and weapons of the men, the household goods and utensils of the women, were so easily replaced that they possessed little value. Practically the only objects open to theft were the strings of wampum beads that served both as ornaments and currency; but such was the value the community of spirit of the Iroquoians, so little did they esteem individual wealth, that a multitude of beads brought neither honor nor profit except so far as it gave the owner an opportunity to display his liberality by lavish contributions to the public coffers.
– The Indians of Canada, D. Jenness (1934), pg. 135-139, excerpted in The Iroquois: A Study in Cultural Evolution, by F. G. Speck (1945) pg. 32-33
[In Tsalagi/Cherokee society] Rather than coercion and punishment, social sanctions like ridicule, withdrawal, and ostracism, were used to bring wrongdoers and non-conformists back into harmony with the community.*
Native people are people – they possess the same capacity for good and evil as anyone else. The only difference is they lacked the industrial capacity for cruelty other cultures had.
Especially when they began trading in the fur trade for guns, they created their own little fiefdoms for hunting, which meant keeping other tribes off their land.
I hate to criticize your source on this one, but “The Indians of Canada, D. Jenness (1934)” is not going to be a reliable authority on native american culture. At that point in history we still had to deal with shit like Just One Drop policies, and although Jenness was a great deal less shitty than many others at the time, the cultures he had access to weren’t representative of the cultures as they stood pre-genocides.
I’ll take your word for it, just looked it up since I knew little about them.
I’m sure they lied plenty as justification for scummy behavior but on this particular topic it looks like a genuine and objective description to me.
He could’ve made up stuff to depict them as violent savages but that isn’t the case here.
Positive racism is still racism - all Asians are good at math, all black people are good at sports, all native american cultures were noble and didn’t have crime. At the very least a canadian anthropologist in 1934, while they may not have been actively participating in a cultural genocide, would have been describing cultures in the midst of being genocided.
Is there no other conclusion than racism, positive or negative?
As I said and AFAIK " it looks like a genuine and objective description to me".
“in the midst of being genocided” does not define the perspective of every individual.
I’m sure there were positive, negative and neutral articles written about jews during WW2.
Very few would have been written by the german government, though.
Again, no, I do not think that Diamond Jenness was necessarily themselves racist - I do think that what they were writing about were cultures actively being genocided by the institution they were working for, at a time period where native people were barely considered human, and the perspective they present will be necessarily colored by that.
There is no theft if you don’t have a concept of ownership.
Well it doesn’t look too bad:
Theft [in Haudenosaunee/Iroquois society] was comparatively rare, for land was the property of the community, surplus food was commonly shared with needier neighbors, and the long bark dwelling belonged to the maternal family, and the personal property like the tools and weapons of the men, the household goods and utensils of the women, were so easily replaced that they possessed little value. Practically the only objects open to theft were the strings of wampum beads that served both as ornaments and currency; but such was the value the community of spirit of the Iroquoians, so little did they esteem individual wealth, that a multitude of beads brought neither honor nor profit except so far as it gave the owner an opportunity to display his liberality by lavish contributions to the public coffers.
Definitely sounds better than what it is now
The Haudenosaunee/Iroquois also practiced slavery.
Native people are people – they possess the same capacity for good and evil as anyone else. The only difference is they lacked the industrial capacity for cruelty other cultures had.
Especially when they began trading in the fur trade for guns, they created their own little fiefdoms for hunting, which meant keeping other tribes off their land.
I do want to be clear: I am not excusing what was done to the Native Americans or any other native people by colonizers – it’s inexcusable.
But the “Noble Savage” myth itself is racism and it needs to die.
I hate to criticize your source on this one, but “The Indians of Canada, D. Jenness (1934)” is not going to be a reliable authority on native american culture. At that point in history we still had to deal with shit like Just One Drop policies, and although Jenness was a great deal less shitty than many others at the time, the cultures he had access to weren’t representative of the cultures as they stood pre-genocides.
I’ll take your word for it, just looked it up since I knew little about them.
I’m sure they lied plenty as justification for scummy behavior but on this particular topic it looks like a genuine and objective description to me.
He could’ve made up stuff to depict them as violent savages but that isn’t the case here.
Positive racism is still racism - all Asians are good at math, all black people are good at sports, all native american cultures were noble and didn’t have crime. At the very least a canadian anthropologist in 1934, while they may not have been actively participating in a cultural genocide, would have been describing cultures in the midst of being genocided.
Is there no other conclusion than racism, positive or negative?
As I said and AFAIK " it looks like a genuine and objective description to me".
“in the midst of being genocided” does not define the perspective of every individual.
I’m sure there were positive, negative and neutral articles written about jews during WW2.
Very few would have been written by the german government, though.
Again, no, I do not think that Diamond Jenness was necessarily themselves racist - I do think that what they were writing about were cultures actively being genocided by the institution they were working for, at a time period where native people were barely considered human, and the perspective they present will be necessarily colored by that.